I am tired of unpleasant breakfast surprises

So, yesterday I was having my usual breakfast, hot chocolate and toast. I tear each piece of bread in half, dip it in my hot chocolate and eat it. Then when my bread it done, I sip my hot chocolate away. When I was taking my last gulp at the bottom of the mug, I felt something a bit crunchy and chunky in my mouth. I got out a napkin and spit it out, to find that there was a dead and blackened wasp in my mouth! Gross!!! I was definitely a little freaked out. It wasn't in my mug that I got out before I poured milk, and I am really hoping it wasn't in the milk. It concerns me how the wasp got into its blackened state—in the microwave? I thought it might have flown into my cup while I was grabbing Juneau to take him back inside for his noise outside. Either way, it was not an experience I wished to repeat. Then, this morning, I was carefully looking in my milk and other places for unwelcome insects. All seemed to be well until I looked at the surface of my hot chocolate mug and saw something floating. Gathering up my courage to face the gross unknown, I took my spoon and lifted it up. Turned out to be a piece of foil. Now that was a real puzzle to me, because there is no foil in the NesQuick or milk, at least not usually. I am just worried about what I will find in tomorrow's breakfast.

Now Ryan is in Ireland, the land of the leprechauns

Ryan is in Cork, Ireland. Word on the street is that there really are as many pubs as are stereotypically related to the Irish, and for it being an English speaking country, Ryan is only training one native English speaker. Ryan is also annoyed that the sun doesn't set until 10:30 pm. It has also been as rainy there as it has been in Utah this past week.

That's the short version. He is going to be gone until either this next Saturday or the Saturday after. It all depends on if he has to go to France on a side trip to their Louis Vuitton client. That's all for me.

Ryan's flight

In what I hope is the first of many interesting blog entries to come, today I’ll be writing about flying to India. Later, we’ll write about what it’s actually like in India—the food, the traffic, the security, the Florida-like atmosphere of equal parts humidity and warmth. On Friday, I got onto an airplane in Salt Lake City at 11:10AM. I had to pass through security (for those of you keeping track at home, this is trip 1 through security), show my passport and visa, and get on the flight. I arrived in Chicago at 3:15PM (Chicago time), and hurried to meet my father-in-law Doug in the unsecure area; I enjoyed a sub sandwich, something I already find myself sorely missing. That done, it was off to the international terminal, where I passed through security yet again (second time) and got on a flight at 5PM bound for Paris.

Luckily enough, Air France seems to know how to do on-board meals (at least on flights from the States to the EU), so it was a fairly comfortable flight. Air France also serves alcohol free of charge to all on board, including those in coach; between the other 3 people on my row, just under a dozen airline size bottles of wine were consumed. And then, around 8AM Saturday morning, French time, the plane lands. We get an interesting tour of the countryside on a bus (apparently the jetways weren’t working at Charles de Gaulle air port that morning, and everyone was being bussed around) as it delivers us to our gate. We have to hurry to get to our connecting flight. This means yet another trip through security (third time around). Somehow, I managed to set off the metal detector this time around, so it’s time for frisking and wanding. They don’t find anything and I manage to avoid setting off the wand, so I collect all of my various belongings and rush to catch the plane.

By the way, EVERY time I went through security, I had to use up 4 of those bins they hand out—1 for my personal laptop, 1 for my work laptop, 1 for my carry-on backpack, and 1 for my belt, shoes, ring, wallet, passport, pen, and jacket. I’m still trying to figure out what exactly triggered the detector in France, as I was able to pass
through security in Chicago and SLC without any difficulty. My personal laptop, an 11-pound Itronix that is made of magnesium and titanium, drew great interest wherever it went through security, but luckily nobody asked me to disassemble it or anything.

So, off to Bangalore we go. This flight is leaving at 10AM and is scheduled to arrive at just after midnight Sunday morning. The food served on this flight was atrocious. Again, lots of free booze flowing. The flight arrives at Bangalore without incident, and by some miracle all of my luggage made it and the flight was on time. I’ve never been on a flight where both of these things were true
(timeliness and luggage, that is).

Now, the final airport hurdle—we have to clear customs and immigration. This is actually a two-step procedure; prove you have a passport, a valid visa, and that you have a place to stay and that you’re going to be leaving within the terms of your visa; when this is done, your bags get tossed and you’re cleared to leave the airport (fourth time through security).

You step outside the airport into a seething mass of humanity waving signs and honking horns. I was reminded very much of Florida—humid, warm, etc. We find our two contacts here in Bangalore (who were kind enough to wear Decho shirts, thereby making them easily identifiable) and piled into an Indian-made SUV branded “Scorpio” (insert your own Simpsons joke here). Tomorrow, perhaps we’ll cover more on the joys of driving in India. Fortuitously, the streets aren’t particularly full at one in the morning, so the drive to the hotel wasn’t nearly as nail-biting as I expected.

We get to the hotel, where our car is checked for bombs by two very lackadaisical guards (they saw our suitcases in the back, but didn’t open them), complete with those nifty under-the-car mirrors you always see in the movies. After we’re given clearance by the bomb guards, we go to the front door, where there are two more guards manning yet another metal detector. There’s no tray in which to put metallic objects, and they just motion us through the detector, bags and all.

As soon as my carry-on (two laptops, remember) goes through, the detector starts screeching ferociously. My carry-on is subjected to yet another cursory search and I’m subjected to another frisking and wanding (second one, for those of you keeping track at home). In the meantime, we’re rather vehemently expressing to the various porters lounging about that no, we are quite capable of getting our bags up to our rooms. Having to deal with the metal detector is now a daily ritual, though the security is more for appearance’s sake than for actually providing security. The guards don’t have firearms, radios, or batons, so even if someone did walk in with a bomb or gun, there’s not a whole lot they can do about it.

In any case, having checked into my room and being quite tired, I crashed onto my bed and got a good 6 hours worth of sleep. More to come tomorrow!

India Man Updates

Ryan made it to India (Bangalore) successfully!!! Yay!! He called me at last night after getting a couple emails from him telling me that he would call on Monday. So Sunday night, being Monday morning to him, was when I actually got the call. He says that the temperature is a lot like Florida and some juice he drank made him sick. He says the Indians are friendly and he is going to go to the market this weekend to buy me gifts (that's the whole purpose for the trip, right?). Something interesting about his hotel room is that there is not an inch of carpet in his whole room. I told him it was probably because carpet would insulate or something and the room would be warmer. His hotel is really nice and it seems like he already misses meat. He rides a cab to work with his co-worker. We're still getting used to the 12 hour or so time difference, especially when we were working out when he is going to call today. I had a final this morning at 7, so when he called last night, that would have been the evening on that same day. Weird.

I'm not the only one that has missed him already however. Due to lack of substitutes for the organ, guess who did a piano solo for sacrament meeting? Me! I got to go up and play prelude, opening, sacrament, closing, and postlude. I hope I pounded loud enough to make even the back row hear the piano. I'm sure Joe's presence and Jon and Rainah's really helped my confidence :) The tenants also missed having Ryan when Joe did a little tinkering with a fridge leak upstairs which caused a flooding from the ceiling in the apartment. Thankfully I wasn't dealing with that little surprise alone, and the tenants have been very flexible and accommodating with that change. We're praying for little water damage and zero odor. We'll see how that goes.

I have one final left as of right now today and am expecting most if not all A's in classes. I get a few days off between Winter and Spring semester, and then back to class. I have three classes left: Children's Literature (I'm looking forward to that one), Exercise Science for Elementary Teachers (we'll see how that one goes), and Statistics 221. I'm really kicking myself now for not taking the AP test Senior year, because I got an A in that class. Hopefully I will be successful in remembering stuff from 4 years ago and it doesn't ruin my GPA.

I enjoyed Killing Bunnies with Joe, Jon, and Rainah yesterday. I know Joe enjoyed at least reading the cards because they were so funny. It was also nice seeing Joe's possible home for the rest of his life. It has a lot of good potential and I don't think he'll ever lack for space.

That's a recent update in a short little summary. Ryan is planning on sending me his daily log of India so that I can post it. I guess the company there has reliable but expensive Internet where they pay by the gig or something. So I will be putting his stuff on my blog. Anyway, hopefully this entertains all of you and makes you all want to go to India or back to school at least :)

The Giraffe Burger

I saw this today at school and had to share this with the world. This is what giraffes look like when McDonalds reaches Africa.